> It's just office space, packaged in a way that suits a few underserved markets.

The whole point of the article is that it's not.

"All its accessories serve to buttress its real product: “office culture” as a service."

It might be more helpful to address the flaws in their argument than merely to state its opposite.

I don't know how to argue against an abstract claim like that. You could say coca cola's real product is "A taste of 1950s America" or that a designer suit is really "a statement of intent."

How do you argue that it is, in fact, a drink?

Yes. This is an article in want of an editor. "I went to an office and there was coffee. A person called X runs the office. X is a singer blah blah blah."

If the article touches anything like 'class' it doesn't touch it in the first couple of thousand words.

I ran a competing CoWorking space in Los Angeles. WeWork is the opposite of the no-frills aesthetic: they have lots of perks, fun perks, they are not cheap, and having any one perk is conspicuous. WeWork is how people not in larger youth communities meet to get laid. That is it. WeWork is a youth community of people spending mom & dad money, conspicuously in a play-like-work space, not really working, and being super irritating to those trying to work.

> WeWork is how people not in larger youth communities meet to get laid

I never knew, maybe they should advertise this more.

Glad to know I can add to the "Unicorns that trick people into thinking they are going to get laid" list that I started during the rise of Facebook.

I'm not sure what that line is supposed to mean. I work in a WeWork as well and everyone seems to be working. Maybe some are worse than others...

I met my wife at work while we seemed to be working.

FWIW, I work out of a wework near my house in Shanghai. I’m a software engineer in my 30’s. Our office is on the other side of the city from where I live, and takes over an hour on the subway to get there. I don’t need to be there physically, so I arranged with my boss to work from home 4 days a week. But working from home is tough, so I work instead from the wework around the corner from my house. Your mileage may vary, but I see tons of people doing real work there. Plenty of early stage startups, but also plenty of more established businesses, even outside of tech. A guy on my floor moved his consulting company office there because the price was comparable to commercial real estate, and the convenience and flexibility were great.

Maybe the reality is that Los Angeles is a youth community of people spending mom and dad money

I was thinking of renting something in Irvine. Anyone have experience working there?

Probably this.

I also work for a company based in a WeWork space, and my experience is that most people there are working, both for startups and non startups alike.

That said, the building setup itself isn't all that great to work in, since despite the perks, actual basics of office maintenance seem to be ignored/shoved under the rug by the company. If your lifts have problems, you can't afford to give out too many ID cards, the microwaves keep failing and the bathrooms aren't cleaned properly, it doesn't matter how many arcade machines and ping pong tables you have.

I have not been to a WeWork, but this is the vibe I got from their advertising: the one that pops up for me on YouTube features a group of good looking millennials, dressed office-chic, walking confidently and shaking hands in slow motion with auspicious music in the background.

The entire message is aesthetic: there's no dialog or text at all, let alone an argument as to why WeWork would benefit your organization. It struck me as more like lifestyle-brand advertising than anything.

Probably because that’s how it’s sold? WeWork is a lifestyle brand.

It’s just interesting they took something like renting out office space and made it something like that

> I don't really understand the fascination/surprise at wework and similar

Image and marketing matters, as much as engineers wish it didn't

Major companies that need distributed workspace for areas that don’t quite need offices, and the “impression” of think tank. They do have cool hosted events fairly often.

It's just paid PR for WeWork. WeWork must have a great PR team and most importantly investors with significant contacts because they get great press.

http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

I don't know, the tone of the article wasn't actually super favorable towards WeWork. The author outright mocked their founder pretty consistently throughout the piece. The vibe I got was more, "WeWorks are nice to work at but they are not as revolutionary as they think they are".

For a PR company, a few negative comments about the business model is a price-of-admission to the New York Times and a pre-requisite for getting it past an editor.

Largely, it's one the PR company / WeWork are happy to pay because they get to say they've been in the NYT, they get exposed to new potential new customers without having to pay per lead, and 'WeWorking' becomes a step closer to being a verb with WeWork's brand attached to it.

It's deeper, its for people who need it.

Disguising PR as articles is really dishonest.

Native advertising... After Craig Newmark effectively killed newspapers’s No. 1 source of revenue, they had to turn to other means of generating ad sales.

I had thought the NYTimes was above that internet troll behavior. Clearly I was mistaken.

Well, that's one less place I'll be spending my money online.